Four Wives Read Online Free Page B

been alone in a room, but this time had been entirely different.
    Whatever it was they had begun had paused there as they returned to the party, and most of her was grateful when she’d found herself safely tucked away in her bed later that night, next to Daniel, having done nothing, really, but smiled. She could see now how that smile had been the third step. Still, in spite of where that smile had led her, she would never let go of the life she had built, the security for herself and the children. What was this? Lust? The innate curiosity of sexual beings? Passion, desire? Those were nothing but the seeds of fleeting encounters, and complete anathema to the sustaining of a committed partnership. And she wanted that above all else’the companion to look after her when she was sick, when time finally claimed her body. She wanted the father who would walk her daughters down the aisle. But he had found her irresistible’and in the end, that was all it had taken. The final step.
    “Mommy,” Janie’s three-year-old was there now, standing at her hip with a ragged blanket trailing by her side.
    She reached down and picked her up.
    “Good morning, sunshine.”
    Her daughter pressed her face next to Janie’s, and they watched themselves watch each other in the mirror.
    Janie sighed at her angel-faced girl, then turned her head to plant a kiss on the soft, chubby cheek.
    “Come on. Let’s go downstairs and start breakfast.”
    Within the hour, it became clear to Janie that she’d been wrong. The anxiety was quieting, perhaps from the rhythm of the morning routine’ packing lunches, pouring bowls of corn flakes, measuring coffee. Or perhaps from the ease of hiding.
    Daniel breezed in, smelling of shaving cream and menthol deodorant. Standing with her back to him, her apparent focus on the four lunchboxes laid out on the counter, Janie made a conscious effort not to greet him directly as he approached her. This was their way, the casual avoidance of married life, and she was careful not to deviate from it as she worked through the tasks.
    “Morning,” he said. His face was still warm from the shower when he gave her a peck on the mouth and patted her behind. Then he reached for his travel mug from the cupboard next to the sink.
    “Are you catching the train, or do you want breakfast?”
    “Train. I’ve got a meeting downtown.”
    Janie took the mug from his hands, filled it with coffee, then added some milk from the fridge. Only as she handed it back did she allow her eyes to meet his.
    “There you go,” she said with a smile.
    He smiled back, then looked away quickly, as he always did.
    “How was the book group?”
    Janie returned to the packing of lunches. “Fine. The usual.”
    “Was the Rice woman there?”
    “Love? No. She’s in the
other
group. The benefit committee for the clinic. And she goes by her mother’s name.
Welsh.”
    “Ahh”
Daniel said, now shuffling through the morning paper on the other side of the kitchen, the wheels turning.
    “We’re meeting today.”
    “How is Gayle? We should see them more.” Daniel was talking, though it had that distant resonance, more like he was verbalizing his thoughts than actually addressing his wife. That was Daniel, always plotting, scheming. It was in his nature’why he was so successful on Wall Street. He knew how to work people, relationships, even friendships’and lately, his marriage. It had cost them ten thousand dollars to buy Janie a seat on the clinic board four years ago. It had been an investment, a way to get close to the Becks and the other local power couples. Of course, Gayle had been the primary draw, being a Haywood, of the New York Haywoods, the family that had made its fortune two generations before by founding its investment firm. That made them old money, the best kind, the kind that looked down on the other kinds. In fact, Gayle Haywood Beck was so far beyond the wealth of anyone in this town that she’d been disqualified from the